In the first Tim Burton Batman movie, Jack Nicholson stole almost every scene he was in as The Joker, but the film was still very much about Batman.
Three years later, and Batman returned, but on the strength of this sequel, perhaps it would have been better if he had remained hidden away in his bat cave.
Nowhere near as much fun as his original, Tim Burton's follow up focuses less on the bat and more on the villains: the Penguin (Danny De Vito), who emerges from the sewers, ostensibly to discover who is parents were, but in reality, to wreak terror on the people of Gotham City, with a little help from unscrupulous industrialist Max Schreck (Christopher Walken). And Catwoman, psycho secretary Selina Kyle, who loses her marbles and turns nasty after being pushed out of a window by Schreck.
Michael Keaton, as Batman, hardly gets a look in.
As well as featuring not nearly enough of its hero, the film also suffers from an air of unrelenting grotesqueness (Burton going overboard on the freaky stuff), a really drab aesthetic (the winter setting leading to lots of dreary grey and blue visuals), and a boring plot in which the Penguin runs for mayor. At over two hours long, I felt my eyelids drooping a lot.
4/10, minus one point for Walken's crazy hair and the unconvincing mechanical penguins/men in penguin costumes, some of the Stan Winston Studio's worst work.